(Daring Mystery Comics 001, 1940)
The Zombie Master has layers. Top level is deeds: he is a scientist who kidnaps people on the fringes of society and uses a combination of hypnosis and radiation to turn them into bright green mind controlled thralls - fairly standard stuff for a mad scientist. Next though, is his origin: he felt rejected by society because of his great height - something like 20 feet tall, according to some sources - and so moved underground in order to work in isolation (and as a side note he mentions that he's been working for about 50 years, so he's a rare Golden Age character who we have an approximate age for: somewhere in his late 60s or early 70s seems reasonable). A giant scientist!
The next layer is only interesting to me: he is not given a name in the story. Luckily, the Zombie Master moniker is later assigned to him because there's no really good option in the text and I'd've ended up calling him something like Unnamed Giant Scientist.
For our final layer we must note that the Zombie Master is a part of the origin story of the Fiery Mask, and that the Fiery Mask was one of the characters who appeared in J. Michael Straczynski's The Twelve, wherein it was revealed that he had not received his powers due to an explosion in the Zombie Master's lab but essentially by murdering the previous Fiery Mask - the Zombie Master was just a story he made up in order to cover for himself/ assuage his guilt. The greatest trick the Zombie Master ever pulled, it seems, was to have never existed at all.
(which of course makes him a perfect candidate to be BRUNG BACK - what better foe than a nonexistent giant science man?)
No comments:
Post a Comment